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Work begins on recreational pot industry rules

Hickenlooper's task force meets for first time

By John Ingold The Denver Post

Posted:
12/17/2012 10:39:57 PM MST

Updated:
12/17/2012 10:40:51 PM MST

The group in charge of creating rules for an industry that has never existed before -- the recreational marijuana stores allowed under Colorado's newly enacted Amendment 64 -- gathered its breath Monday before getting to work.

Though the conference room at the Department of Revenue's gaming division offices in Golden is the biggest the department has, the room for the task force's first meeting was packed beyond capacity, with marijuana advocates, reporters and others standing against walls, sitting on the floor and crammed into the aisles to watch a meeting that mostly consisted of task force members identifying the issues they need to address.

By the end of the meeting, the 24 task force members had come up with dozens of topics -- everything from basic licensing requirements for recreational marijuana businesses to questions of whether the state should regulate potency of marijuana -- that require discussion.

The task force has until Feb. 28 to work it all out and issue a report.

"This is not going to be easy," said Department of Revenue Executive Director Barbara Brohl, who is a co-chair of the task force. "We're going to be tackling a lot of difficult subjects, sometimes with competing viewpoints. We'll just have to work hard."

Attorney Christian Sederberg, one of the leaders of the pro-Amendment 64 campaign and a task force member, said after the meeting he thought the group's members were concerned they faced an overwhelming task.

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To make the work less overwhelming, the task force will divide into working groups to focus on issues in five areas: business regulations for marijuana stores; the types of local regulations cities and counties can impose; taxes and matters of civil law, including employment issues; matters of criminal law; and social issues related to marijuana legalization, including consumer safety.

For about an hour during a brainstorming session Monday, task force members tossed out issues for the subgroups to take up -- adding to a list of 23 questions task force leaders had already put together: Should the state try to regulate marijuana potency? How should marijuana products be packaged and labeled? What should the state do to address concerns about secondhand marijuana smoke? And what should Colorado do if the federal government attempts to crush the whole thing?

Jack Finlaw, Gov. John Hickenlooper's chief legal counsel and the other task force co-chair, said the state has no information about how the Justice Department might respond to marijuana legalization -- beyond the public statements that federal officials still consider marijuana illegal.

"We have no additional information about either the timing or the substance of any federal action," Finlaw said.

At the end of the meeting, Finlaw opened the floor to public comment, giving the advocates squ

ished into the audience a chance to speak their minds. What followed was an orderly statement of concerns -- one person said the task force should urge cities to hold off on local marijuana-store bans until the state has written its rules for the businesses, another pointed to deficiencies in current medical marijuana business regulation -- that gave Sederberg hope for the task force's work.

No one has ever created rules for a recreational marijuana industry like Colorado is attempting. But no place knows regulation of marijuana businesses better than Colorado.

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